Could Riverside County cities leave the Sheriff’s Department over a rate dispute?

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Riverside County sheriff’s deputies investigate the scene of an officer-involved shooting in Perris in this 2014 file photo. County officials say cities like Perris that use the sheriff as their police department aren’t paying enough to cover the full cost of services (File photo).

Cities that use the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for their police are happy with the service, but not the price tag.

But county officials say if anything, it’s the county that’s been getting a raw deal. County government, they say, isn’t getting enough to cover the cost of sheriff’s services to cities.

With that in mind, the Board of Supervisors could change how the rate paid by contract cities is calculated. That could boost costs for cities already upset with the current rates and spur cities to form their own police departments or a multi-city police force – something that’s already being explored.

“Cities are being priced out of the sheriff’s market,” said San Jacinto city manager Rob Johnson.

“I would say we’re not excited about the concept of being assessed more, nor do we believe we should be paying more for these baseline services,” Temecula city manager Aaron Adams said.

County officials argue the financially challenged county needs full reimbursement. Staff from the county executive office have met with city officials to get cities’ input on the rate.

Seventeen of the county’s 28 cities, home to about a million of the county’s 2.3 million residents, have sheriff’s contracts. The Sheriff’s Department also is responsible for jails, courthouse security, coroner’s duties and search and rescue for the whole county as well as patrolling the county’s unincorporated areas.

Cities with their own police departments include Riverside, Corona, Murrieta, Hemet and Palm Springs.

‘Pure mathematics’

Contract rate complaints reached a crescendo in 2015, when city leaders wrote letters and went to Board of Supervisors meetings pleading for relief, saying contract costs threatened to overwhelm their finances.

“It’s pure mathematics,” then-Jurupa Valley councilman Brad Hancock said in May 2015, when the contract took up 62 percent of his city’s overall budget. “It’s getting to the point where the increases are outpacing what we can keep up with.”

Sheriff Stan Sniff blamed the higher rates on board-approved union contracts that gave raises to deputies and other sheriff’s employees.

In October 2015, supervisors gave consulting firm KPMG almost $762,000 to analyze the rate and review public safety spending. Since then, KPMG has received more than $30 million to find savings and efficiencies throughout county government, work that officials said saved more than $100 million.

Saving money is crucial for the county’s $5.5 billion budget, which took years to recover financially from the 2007-2008 Great Recession. Revenue bounced back, but not enough to keep pace with new, ongoing and mandatory expenses, from pension obligations to the cost of building and staffing an expanded Indio jail to relieve crowding.

After an “intensive review” of the rate by KPMG, sheriff’s staff, the executive office and county lawyers, “the executive office has concluded that the cities have been underpaying for some of these important efforts,” said Jeff Van Wagenen, assistant county executive officer/public safety. Examples of services the county wants more money for include forensics work, supervision of patrol deputies by senior staff – sheriff’s captains serve as city police chiefs – and air support.

The county isn’t looking for full cost recovery right away, Van Wagenen said, adding that changes to recoup more costs would be phased in over three years.

Like airlines?

Contract cities are questioning the county’s reasoning and whether they are being heard. “The cities all feel like we are not being treated like a valued partner in the process,” said Grant Yates, city manager in Lake Elsinore, which spends about a third of its budget on the sheriff’s contract.

Moreno Valley City Manager Tom DeSantis (Courtesy photo)

Moreno Valley city manager Tom DeSantis said: “We have to wonder if the county staff is intentionally emulating commercial airlines, where ticket prices have increased and now passengers must also begin paying to check their luggage.”

“It doesn’t feel right when we’re traveling by air, and it’s not right to bill taxpayers for services that have been included in the base rate for more than 30 years,” he added.

Norco city manager Andy Okoro said: “If these are costs that the county would have regardless of contract cities, then it will be difficult for them to justify why contract cities should pay for any of it.”

Van Wagenen said city contractual needs can influence the size and scope of baseline services.

Menifee city manager Armando Villa said it’s fortunate that city voters in 2016 agreed to raise the city’s sales tax 1 percentage point to help cover contract costs and add deputy hours of service.

Still, the current rate hikes are unsustainable, and the latest rate hike will cost the city another $1 million, Villa said. Fifty-six percent of Menifee’s budget goes to public safety, leaving less for roads, parks, and other services, he said.

“If we don’t find a way to regulate these costs, we’ll find it goes to 60 (or) 70 percent,” Villa said. “That’s not good governance.”

Stay or go?

Van Wagenen said he believes contract cities will stick with the Sheriff’s Department.

“The county continues to support the cooperative law-enforcement model in which the sheriff provides service to contract cities,” he said. “While we recognize that this discussion will likely result in an increased cost to those cities, the county believes all parties need to understand the actual costs to provide the level of service that each city desires.

“To ensure that we can continue to provide that service, it is imperative that we seek reimbursement for the actual costs associated with that service.”

At least two supervisors have questioned whether large cities should go it alone.

“My belief is, it’s time become for larger cities to (form) their own police department(s) and let us serve the smaller cities,” Supervisor John Tavaglione, who leaves office in early January, said in May 2017. “Because if you think your costs are large, try it on your own.”

Riverside County Supervisor Kevin Jeffries. (Courtesy photo).

This February, Supervisor Kevin Jeffries expressed concern that lawsuits over deputy actions in Moreno Valley were a major factor in the county’s rising liability costs. “And frankly, there’s the potential that the county is not going to do contracts for extremely large cities going forward,” Jeffries said at the time.

“If that’s a decision the board wants to make, we need to give those one or two or three cities, two or three years’ notice to make plans go out on their own, if that’s the direction we choose to go because we lose money with these contract cities.”

A consultant hired by nine contract cities found that a joint powers authority for police services could save those cities a combined $14 million a year. Cities want to hire another firm to further review that study.

Villa said Menifee, which is expected to have 100,000 residents by 2020, will study creating its own police department.

“We have to find the most cost-effective way to provide these services,” he said.

Staff writers David Downey, Shane Newell, and Craig Shultz contributed to this story.

Contract cities

These are the cities that contract with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for police services.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.